Emma Stone Reveals “Coping Mechanism” for Navigating Fame: Thinking of Herself as an Avatar

As one of the world’s most famous actresses — with two Academy Awards to back up that distinction — Emma Stone knows a thing or two about fame. During Thursday’s press conference for her new film Bugonia at the Venice Film Festival, she revealed a creative strategy for how to navigate all the tricky things that come along with it.

Asked by a journalist at the start of the presser how she manages success and fame “without turning into an alien,” Stone quipped, “How do you know I’m not an alien?” The joke lots of laughs for a query that proved to be incredibly on theme: Bugonia casts Stone as a high-powered CEO from a major company who is kidnapped by two conspiracy theorists who are convinced she’s an alien intent on destroying Earth.

Stone then turned her attention towards a more earnest answer.

“Everybody sort of deals with that now [because] there’s a lot of self reflection for everyone [with] social media or the way that you’re kind of viewed outside of yourself to the world. We all can relate to that feeling of somebody thinking they know you or thinking you could express an opinion and having it feel fraught and intense and like you don’t have much control of the thing,” she said.

Then came that creative strategy: “I call it the avatar outside of me. There’s me and then there’s, like, me here [at the festival] if that makes any sense. I separate the two in my mind a little bit, which I maybe need to do less. As a coping mechanism, there’s the person who comes here, and then there’s a person I am with all my friends and family — and they’re sthe same person. It’s just different things to keep myself sane, I guess.”

Bugonia casts Stone as a high-powered CEO of a major company that is kidnapped by two rogue conspiracy theorists who believe her to be an alien intent on destroying planet Earth. The film, which has its world premiere tonight at Sala Grande, is one of the more hotly anticipated titles here at the Venice Film Festival, which runs Aug. 27-Sept. 6.

It also marks another reteaming of Stone with Lanthimos following earlier work in Poor Things, Kinds of Kindness and The Favourite. “It’s clear that I love working with Yorgos and I love the material he’s drawn to and the characters he explores,” she said during the press conference, adding that it’s important to point out that many members of the Bugonia team are his frequent collaborators. “What it ends up feeling like is a really comforting and safe environment to explore and feel as free as possible becuase you know these people. I know everybody says that ‘we’re a family’ thing but it really does feel like that.”

She also said that the themes of Bugonia, however challenging, mirror our current reality in many ways. “There’s so much that’s happening that’s reflective of this time in our world and it’s told in a way that’s really fascinating and moving, funny and fucked up, and alive.”

Stone in Bugonia.

Atsushi Nishijima/Focus Features